Associate Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, Deborah T. Eisenberg has been compiling a list of resources for teaching practical legal skills.

“The ABA Dispute Resolution Section sponsors a website that includes resources for teaching practical problem-solving and professional skills: http://leaps.uoregon.edu/. We are developing a list of textbooks that incorporate practical problem-solving and professional skills into the teaching of subject areas that have traditionally been taught in a lecture-based, case analysis format. Feel free to take a look at this list, and circulate to your colleagues, as you select coursebooks for next year.

In addition, if you know of books that should be added to the list, please let me know. I know many of you teach across the curriculum. I’ll post this to the LEAPS website in about two weeks to allow time to incorporate your suggestions (finding these books is more difficult than it should be!). Note that books focused on ADR, clinical education, and legal writing are not included because nearly all of those books incorporate practical problem-solving and skills. We’re trying to be a resource for professors who would like to move away from lecture-based formats in teaching “doctrinal” courses.”

You can view the list under the cut.

Legal Texts that Incorporate Practical Problem-Solvingand Professional Skills Development

This list identifies texts that incorporate practical problem-solving and professional skills into the teaching of doctrinal areas that traditionally have been taught through lecture and appellate case analysis. It does not include texts focused on clinical education, legal writing, legal methods, trial practice, or dispute resolution, because most of the texts in those areas incorporate practical problem-solving and practical skills. (Some of the descriptions below are copied from the publisher’s websites.)

TEXTBOOK SERIESSeveral publishers have series that incorporate exercises designed to build practical problem-solving and professional skills. These include:

West AcademicDeveloping Professional Skills Series
Supplemental books with exercises designed to build professional skills. Subject areas include business associations, property, civil procedure, and contracts.

Bridge to Practice Series
Books that include simulation exercises to teach how doctrine and rules work in realistic settings. Subject areas include evidence, property, civil procedure, and criminal procedure.

The Learning Series
Case books that encourage active student involvement in the learning process. Subject areas include evidence and civil procedure, with more to come.

Experiencing Law Series
These primary coursebooks cover the doctrine traditionally covered in the classroom while simultaneously offering experiential exercises to illustrate the concepts of the subject being taught. The books feature the key cases and cover the doctrine in much the same fashion as other standard casebooks. The books in this series will help support a course that balances traditional case analysis with statutory and rule analysis and experiential education.

Civil ProcedureJohn, T. Cross, et al., Civil Procedure: Cases, Problems and Exercises (West) (uses “an extensive set of problems and exercises, which helps students become accustomed to reading and using the rule itself, rather than relying on a court’s paraphrasing of that rule. The book uses cases decided in the last decade, underscoring that civil procedure is a subject in constant flux, and incorporates the 2007 complete revision of the Federal Rules.”)

Family LawDouglas Abrams, et al., Contemporary Family Law (West) (supplements family law with chapters on lawyering, private ordering, and alternative dispute resolution and “emphasized the importance of legal practice issues by placing the lawyering chapter at the beginning of the book, and by using problems that enable students to apply doctrine.”).

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Debbie Zalesne and David Nadvorney just published a Contracts book with Carolina Academic Press called “Teaching to Every Student: Explicitly Integrating Skills and Theory into the Contacts class.” This book fits perfectly with this list of sources.

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